I’ve been craving pasta lately…(okay, let’s be real. I ALWAYS crave pasta. This is nothing new).

And not just any pasta, I’ve been yearning for pasta with thick, creamy white sauce. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a huge red pasta sauce gal.

“What do you mean?!” Bryan would say…“You put red sauce on everything…”

Okay, while he may be right (please don’t tell him I said that), for some reason I only like red sauce when I’m dipping breadsticksinto it or smothering it on top of pizza (which already has some on it).

Even though it’s almost always summer in south Florida, sometimes I crave big bowls of warm comfort food. And lately I’ve been feeling super fatigued – a few nights ago, Bryan said to me, “Mandy, you need to stop working so much.” And today when he left for work he said, “please do something fun today.”

Well….the plague is finally starting to subside. And by subside I mean I am slowly starting to get my energy back, the coughing has decreased, and I’m only down to about 5 cough drops a day (as opposed to an entire bag).

Hey, I’ll take that as a win.

I can honestly say that I haven’t been this sick in a very long time. Which had me thinking…perhaps my body is trying to tell me something. Like I’m overdoing it. I’ve been going through some emotional stress (something I’ll eventually share) and working 3 physically demanding jobs, all while trying to spend time with Bryan and the pups, as well as by myself.

I briefly mentioned that I recently started monitoring sea turtle nests – I walk the beach and record sea turtle crawls and nests for a sea turtle monitoring program. I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks now and I’m already loving every second of it…

Minus getting up at 5am. Okay, 5:09 am if you count my snooze button. Once I’m awake and on the beach, reality sets in and the 5am wake up call quickly vanishes.

Some of my favorite recipes are the most simple ones. It’s easy to get caught up in making meals with several ingredients, but some of the best meals only have a few! Like this Sweet Peanut Butter Oatmeal.

Cook. Swirl. Eat. It’s as simple as that.

Oatmeal is one of my favorite breakfast dishes. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it’s warm and comforting. Or maybe because it’s so versatile and you can make every bowl taste so different!

It’s been a very busy week for me – I’ve been trying to stay busy while Bryan is gone (this is my solution for making the time go by faster). And yes, y’all will be happy to know that I have accomplished four out of five things on my Things I want to Accomplish list:

Reading: I’m currently reading Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Sadly, I started this book awhile ago and never have finished it, so I made it a point to finish it a.s.a.p!